Hans Weber1,
Martin Haas1, Denis Kokorin1, 2, Jrgen
Hennig1, Maxim Zaitsev1
1Department
of Radiology, Medical Physics, University Medical Center Freiburg, Freiburg,
Germany; 2International Tomography Center, Novosibirsk, Russian
Federation
ExLoc allows excitation and geometrically matched spatial encoding of customized curved slices, based on a combination of linear and nonlinear gradients. The combination of ExLoc with multidimensional RF-pulses allows compensating for varying slice thickness originating from the nonlinearity of the applied slice-selection field. In this study, we exploit this technique for additional local adaptation of the slice shape. Compared to conventional multi-dimensional excitation with linear encoding fields to excite a curved slice, using this approach allows considerably shorter RF-pulses to be used.